President Park Geun-hye held a meeting with leaders from rival political parties Thursday to discuss a wide range of issues.
It is the second time that Park has met with Kim Moo-sung, head of the ruling Saenuri Party, and Moon Jae-in, leader of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, this year.
They met for nearly 110 minutes, though no details of the meeting were immediately available.
The latest meeting was proposed by Cheong Wa Dae to debrief the leaders of the rival parties on Park’s recent trip to the United States. The meeting also included floor leaders from the rival parties.
The presidential office said before the meeting that Park plans to ask for cooperation from the opposition party on next year’s budget and a set of bills to improve people’s livelihoods.
Park also plans to ask the parliament to quickly ratify a free trade deal inked between South Korea and China in June. The deal has also yet to be ratified by the Chinese legislature.
It remains unclear how Moon reacted to Park’s planned request for cooperation due to the dispute over history textbooks.
The opposition party has voiced its opposition to the government’s plan to reintroduce state history textbooks for secondary school students to address what it calls the predominantly left-leaning contents in current books.
Park has called for a “correct” recognition of history, noting history education should never divide the people and students over political strife or ideological confrontation.
The Ministry of Education said earlier this month history textbooks for middle and high school students will be authored by the government starting in the 2017 school year.
Currently, history textbooks are published by eight private publishing companies after being approved by an independent textbook review committee of experts. Schools choose from any of the eight textbooks, while primary schools have a single set of state-authored history textbooks. (Yonhap)
